Monday, November 30, 2009

Here's what one writer wrote about the Tiger Woods incident: "For one moment, imagine the situation reversed. Suppose he had scratched his wife for infidelity, and she had been in the accident. We would expect him to be charged like a thousand other athletes. Should Elin be charged, if she did scratch him?"

It is astounding that anyone would even think it's necessary to ask that question in 2009. Last time I checked, someone can be injured by a loved one even if he has a penis. Why on earth is a person's victimization judged on the basis of his or her genitalia?

Of course we all know why. Because issues that ought to be looked at purely in terms of criminality have become embroiled in gender politics, where the sex of the alleged victim and the alleged perpetrator is far more important than the act in question. Crimes and allegations of crimes take on meanings far beyond the facts of the particular case -- they become symbolic of purported male oppression of females, and that symbolism becomes more important than the facts.

In this case, the facts don't fit the preferred gender metanarrative, so one of the unwritten laws of gender politics is that it's OK to ignore the entire incident, or to lie about it.

If the genders in this case were reversed, feminist activists would be calling for a police investigation and, if warranted (and even if not warranted), charges. They would be trotting out the usual arguments that absused women often protect their absuers, etc.

All well and good. But the fact is, when the victim is male, it's even more likely that he will not report -- reporting isn't consistent with the macho role women have assigned us to play.

Here's the bottom line: if the feminists want credibility, if they want people to believe they truly are concerned with gender equity and are not just a lobby for certain women, they would call for a police investigation in this case.

And here's the important part: if the facts play out that Tiger was attacked by his wife, she needs to be punished, and the feminists ought to be holding Tiger out as a feminist icon. You heard me right. An icon. Because Tiger, I would bet every dollar I own, could have flattened his wife the moment she laid a finger on him -- but he didn't. And one would think that's the kind of man feminists would be putting on a pedestal, if their fancy words had any meaning.

But, ladies, if you want us to "take it like a man" as Tiger apparently did, you need to insist that our abusers take their punishment like a lady -- a lady who's committed an assault. If not, don't screech and squeal the next time a man defends himself because the law won't.

Sunday, November 29, 2009

If girls were victimized in a comparable manner, it would be an international story. But this story is just more male-on-male violence -- you know, "boys being boys," so it's just a minor story very few people will hear about. The fact that some girls are participating in the "fun" and hurting boys is of no moment because, as we know, female-on-male violence isn't just tolerated, it's applauded in this culture.

It's a disturbing game with devastating consequences, and a new WTHR survey suggests it is rampant in Indiana schools.

"Ball tapping" is the act of intentionally hitting or kicking a male in the genitals. Earlier this month, an Eyewitness News investigation showed the game has become commonplace in some area schools, resulting in serious injuries for students.

Friday, November 27, 2009

A woman who posted explicit photographs of herself on the web and then falsely claimed a man she met online had raped her has been jailed for nine months.

Beverley Stephenson's false allegation sparked a full police investigation, including house-to-house inquiries, a poster campaign, and a press appeal.

Stephenson, 42, from Horden, Sunderland, admitted perverting the course of justice between April 5 and May 14, last year.

Judge John Evans, passing sentence, said: 'People who make false allegations such as these undermine the criminal justice system, and there are serious implications for genuine victims.

Never mind the direct victims of a false accusation, the falsely accused, judge. Let's again focus on the possible, hypothetical future victims, and completely minimize the damage done to those, who, by your account, just aren't important, the falsely accused men.

'Your fabricated claims completely undermined the investigation into your own allegation of rape.'

He added: 'All of this is of your own making. You could have called a halt to it at any time. I am told you have psychological and other difficulties, but they cannot excuse what you did.'

Stephenson wept as she was jailed and had to be helped from the dock as she was led away.

Prosecutor Amanda Rippon said Stephenson initially told police she did not know the identity of her alleged attacker.

She later falsely indicated he might have been a member of a family with whom she had fallen out.

'Her accounts resulted in the arrest and questioning of three men,' Mrs Rippon added. 'At least two of the men were kept in custody for several hours.

3 men. Wouldn't you think that after it was realized that the first man was falsely accused, they wouldn't have pulled in 2 more?

'Each of the men said being implicated, albeit wrongly, in a rape has caused them embarrassment and difficulties with their own friends and families.'

And that is the damage that is often minimized and overlooked in a false accusation. This is why the punishment for false accusations needs to be more severe.

Police became suspicious of Stephenson when she claimed hair pulled from her head in the attack actually came from her hairbrush.

The court heard she had sex in her lounge with the man she met online, but the evidence suggested it was consensual.

Alexia Zimbler, defending, said: 'This is an unusual case in that Ms Stephenson still maintains she was raped.

Of course. Continually proclaiming she was raped, even after it is shown it was consensual, maintains the "victimhood" status, as well as sets up a defense of mental incapacity. In this case, It doesn't look like the judge bought it, thankfully.

'But she accepts the way in which she misled the police made it impossible for that allegation to be properly investigated.

'She was ashamed and embarrassed by the way she met this man, and feared the police would not believe her or take her seriously if she told the truth about that.'

The grand jury only heard from the prosecution, and refused to indict. And notice the stand alone sentence that mentions his 9 guns, intimating that he is a danger because of those. Again, the not so subtle way the press presumes guilt, even with the grand jury refusing to indict.

Wednesday, November 25, 2009

Professor KC Johnson has done more to publicize the plight of persons falsely accused of rape than any contemporary American, and I don't make that statement lightly. We rarely discuss Duke lacrosse here because that's his territory at Durham in Wonderland, and most anything we'd write would be superfulous. How important was Prof. Johnson's blogging in forcing the world to notice the plight of three seemingly unlikely victims in the Duke case? It's impossible to quantify, but significant. As but one indication, when the three young men were declared "innocent," Reade Seligmann thanked Johnson in a prepared statement.

In this post from yesterday, Professor Johnson notes the disturbing habit of the press to rush to judgment when it comes to rape claims -- something we constantly write about. He reports on how the press dubbed the rape accuser in the Sacred Heart rape case a "victim," and referred to the accuser as a "girl" while calling her same-aged alleged male attackers "men." He notes that a writer who uses the "victim" nomenclautre "has concluded that a crime occurred, since otherwise, how could the (unnamed) accuser be a victim?" Regarding the news outlet that seems confused about the age of adulthood for females, he wrote this: "It’s unclear if Newsday policy suggests differing ages of adulthood for males and females." Read it here: http://durhamwonderland.blogspot.com/2009/11/victim-was-girl.html

BUENOS AIRES – A 42-year-old man spent 20 months in a maximum security prison accused of raping his daughter, but the girl repented and confessed that she lied when she accused him, the press said on Friday.

The prosecutor withdrew the charges and the court released the defendant, after his daughter, now 19, repeated that she had lied, something that she had already said during the initial investigation, but her statement was not admitted because of the possibility that she had been pressured by the family.

So, without any proof that the family pressured her, just the possibility, her statement was not admitted. Twenty months in a maximum security prison, because the prosecutor refused to allow that the girl lied. Sounds like a prosecutor that needs to spend some time behind bars.

Defense attorney Claudia Mirele said in a statement published in the Buenos Aires daily Clarin that the girl lied as a reprisal against her father for being “too strait-laced.”

“The girl’s main argument with her father was the strict control the man exercised over his five children. My client is a truck driver, but he had gone to university and to feed his family he left school. He wanted his children to study and not be lazy.

Notice how she is constantly referred to as a 'girl'. Sorry, but at 19, women are adults. This young woman needs to face some serious consequences for this act. To accuse your father of rape, and have him spend almost 2 years in prison, merits some form of punishment.

He was a strict, controlling father,” the attorney said.

The daughter of the accused had stated in the hearing of the case that the charge was unfounded.

“It was a terrible thing. When the plaintiff has suffered no physical consequences, the court must base its decision on circumstantial evidence. The minor, after making the accusation, said that her father was innocent. But at the time it was feared that the girl had been threatened to make her give another version of what happened,” prosecutor Marcelo Altamirano said.

It was "feared". No checking to see if there were any threats, just what was "feared." Good reason to put a man in prison for 20 months.

The defendant was confined for almost two years because of the case and, had he been sentenced, would have spent from eight to 20 years behind bars.

The Alleghany County Sheriff’s Office has charged 27-year-old Alicia Webb of Lewisburg, WV with giving a false police report to police. Investigators say Webb confessed that she made up a story about being abducted and raped on July 8, 2009.

Investigators say Webb told them a man jumped into her car in at the corner of Alleghany and Cypress in Covington and made her drive to the McKinney Hollow area of Alleghany County. She told them the man sexually assaulted her and then ran. The woman walked to a home to get help.

The Alleghany County Sheriff’s Office says the charge against Webb is a misdemeanor. But, if convicted, Webb could face up to 12 months in jail and/or a fine of $2,500. Investigators say restitution to cover the cost of the investigation will also be sought when the case is heard.

A few random notes: The monstrous hit "New Moon" shattered box office expectations over the weekend, powered by its overwhelmingly double X chromosome fan base. In case you don't know, "New Moon" is anything but feminist fare. While I am certain that feminist "thinkers" (an oxymoron of the most grotesque kind) are weighing in on both sides of that question and doing what they do best -- making up their own "truth" as they go along, I need not support my assertion with evidence beyond noting the plot of the film: it is a story about a girl willing to give up her very mortal existence to forever be with the boy she loves. By comparison, "New Moon" makes "Snow White" and "Cinderella" look like anthems for feminist women. Which tells us what? Well, it's just one piece of evidence that tends to support the conclusion that traditional gender roles are still mainstream, and likely always will be, and that feminists wield power in the halls of government far disproportionate to their numbers.

 There's a scene in "New Moon" where teens are watching a sad movie. The camera pans from one to the next until settling on Eric, the token Asian American student in the film. Eric is so touched by whatever it was they were watching, he has tears streaming down his face. At a crowded showing of the film over the weekend in a very large urban theater, that shot elicited a burst of high-pitched, girlish laughter. Men, and boys, aren't supposed to cry, and the girls found Eric's reaction "funny." You see, feminism, whose influence peaked thirty-five years ago, has done nothing except pay lip service to alter gender roles when it comes to men. Mind you, these weren't young men laughing; these were teen and slightly older females laughing at a young man for exhibiting what is widely believed to be a feminine characteristic. Feminism is content to leave unaltered what women have always done: keep men in their little, gender constricted box. This gives feminists the chance to angrily talk about how "masculinity" needs to be redefined along feminist lines.

 If you want to see feminists' true colors, here's a little recent example of one of them yapping with her guard down. Joy Behar (who, by the way, recently took the president to task for playing too much all-male basketball and golf, thereby leaving the female power players at a supposed disadvantage) called stay-at-home dad Todd Palin -- the man who just last year held two jobs and worked occasional 85-hour weeks -- a "bum." That's right, a "bum." Never mind that the Palins have four underage children and that Mom is the family's principal breadwinner and that she's constantly on the road. In theory, one would think the feminists would hold Todd Palin out as a feminist icon instead of a "bum." Feminist ideology, gender equity, and insisting that every person be treated as a human being all go out the window any time one of them sees the slightest opportunity to engage in male bashing, which none of them seem able to resist.

 Why do some colleges engage in at least an unofficial affirmative action for men? Is it to give struggling young men a needed boost, the way affirmative action is intended to help every other disadvantaged group? Heavens, no. The entire effort is motivated by a gynocentric view of the world: it's designed (1) to give female students what they want (a chance to get a date on Saturday night -- so admitting a few young men who don't really deserve to be there is like spreading a little peanut butter in a mouse trap), and (2) to give the schools what they really want (the best FEMALE students they can attract). Read this: "A few years back, a friend who teaches in a graduate political science department at a prominent university told me that the women who applied to his school's program were so much more qualified than the male applicants that if all applicants were selected solely on the basis of academic merit, no men would be admitted to the program. That would be fine with my friend except for the fact that highly qualified women will not attend a program that is all female. Thus this program actually engaged in what amounts to affirmative action for males in order to attract and keep highly qualified female students." (Don't you love how the speaker would be just "fine" with all female students? I'm sure she or he wouldn't be so "fine" with all males, or all whites, or all Christians. "Diversity," you see, is a code word for "fewer white heterosexual males.")

 How would the following comments be received in the progressive news media if the genders were reversed? We KNOW how they'd be received -- with protests, disgust, and newspaper column after column about how "far" we still have to go to overcome sexism. But I'll bet you never even heard about these comments -- because it was a powerful women talking about a younger man: Last week, Hillary Clinton described the British foreign secretary David Miliband as “tall and dashing." She swooned: “If you saw him, it would be a big crush. I mean, he is so vibrant, vital, attractive and smart.” And if the genders were reversed, guess who'd have been among the first to complain that the speaker put "attractive" ahead of "smart." So much for feminist ideology, gender equity, and insisting that every person is a human being -- all that goes out the window any time one of them sees Prince Charming.

A federal judge on Friday sentenced three people who concocted a bizarre scheme to stage a sexual assault in Waldo to boost the payoff on a civil lawsuit.

Agreeing that the scheme was “harebrained” and “ridiculous,” U.S. District Judge Ortrie Smith sentenced Gordon F. Reabe, 52, Julie R. Bernet, 40, and Lindsey D. Crawford, 24, to a year and a day, 10 months and probation, respectively.

Saturday, November 21, 2009

This is a chilling news article. Men can only fully escape the stigma of a false rape claim by giving up their once-good names and shedding their former identities -- in effect, running away and hiding in a sort of witness protection program of their own making. Most disturbing in the news story below is the callousness of the person quoted who doesn't want the presumed innocent to be afforded anonymity, Ruth Hall of Women Against Rape. The cold-heartedness is mind-boggling. Hall has her issue, rape, and to hell with victims of other crimes, such as false rape reporting. The sexual grievance industry constantly insists on equating a rape lie with lies about murder and other crimes for which the truth is much easier to learn and which rarely stigmatize innocent people,. That insistence is dishonest in the extreme.

Friday, November 20, 2009

"The rabbit-hole went straight on like a tunnel for some way, and then dipped suddenly down, so suddenly that Alice had not a moment to think about stopping herself before she found herself falling down a very deep well."

We recently reported that a woman recanted after accusing three 18-year-old male classmates of raping her at Loyola University. The university didn't think the incident posed a danger to the student population, and the police aren't charging the three young men.

Now the dean of students had this to say -- and men, don't spit out your coffee or punch the computer screen when you get to the third paragraph:

Jane Neufeld, dean of students, said if the university felt the student population was in any danger following the report of the assault, an e-mail would have been sent out immediately.

“It’s been reported and it allegedly happened,” Neufeld said. “We’re following our procedures to get to the truth.”

“We take sexual assault very seriously,” she explained. “We need to be able to protect the survivor and all those involved at this sensitive time.”

Did you get that? The woman recanted; the university itself didn't think there was a danger; the police aren't charging the three men who are barely older than boys -- but the woman is a "survivor"?

Come again? And the female dean also says this is a "sensitve time"?

Of course it's a sensitive time -- for the three falsely accused young men. (Here's something you won't see feminists do, I'm going to engage in a little victim blaming: boys, you were stupid to put yourselves in that situation. No one ever deserves to be falsely accused of rape, but you need to be more careful about the women you trust. It's an occupational hazard of being born male.)

But let's think about what it means to say she's a "survivor"?! Here's the bottom line: if she's a "survivor," the three young men must be RAPISTS. So much for due process, the presumption of innocence, fairness, justice, and gender equity. Dean Neufeld has declared the boys guilty by reason of penis.

What in hell is wrong with you, Dean Neufeld? Seriously? When you find this post -- and people like you usually do -- please write to me and explain what motivated you to use that term. You trivialize rape and rape survivors by sweeping in their company women who recant rape claims. The only "survivors" here are the young men, but I suppose their victimization doesn't count, because of the penises and all.

And people wonder why young men are staying away from college in droves?

What is so difficult for people to accept here? There was no rape; the woman recanted; the police aren't charging the young men with a crime; and the school needs to drop it.

Another goofy scenario involving young people and sex play leads to a false rape charge. And once again, the false accuser was prepared to throw the victim under the bus to spare her relationship with her boyfriend. Imagine the difficulty detectives had trying to unravel what really happened here.

MUNCIE -- Allegations stemming from a game of "strip Yahtzee" led to a Muncie woman's arrest this week.

Amber M. Foster, 21, was arrested Tuesday night on a charge of false informing, a Class A misdemeanor carrying a maximum one-year jail term, after police said they determined her claims that a former boyfriend had raped her were false.

I hope that this young woman is thrown out of school. It is what commonly happens to those who are accused of rape, and she deserves equal treatment. In addition, please notice that the title to the piece still refers to her as a "victim," even though she has recanted. Is it any wonder that those falsely accused are stigmatized even after being cleared?

A Radford University Police Department investigation has determined that a sexual assault on a female student reported Oct. 8 was fabricated by the student and did not occur. The alleged victim has recanted her story. The RU Police Department had issued a “timely warning” to the community regarding the alleged event, in compliance with federal Clery Act provisions that require university officials to warn the campus community if there is a significant risk to public safety.

That warning, as well as news of the alleged sexual assault, was widely reported by local media, including the New River Voice, along with a description of the alleged perpetrator of the crime. Police investigators have determined that the alleged victim fabricated the details of the description as well.

The student’s motive for filing a false report is unknown. University officials will take action against the alleged victim through the campus judicial system for filing a false complaint.

Radford University Police Officers are continuing to investigate a second allegation of sexual assault that was reported to officials early on the morning of Oct. 11.

Early in that investigation, RU police officials made the determination that the incident did not pose a significant risk to campus safety and chose not to release a campus-wide “timely warning.” That investigation continues.

Thursday, November 19, 2009

We've written extensively on this blog about asymmetrical anonymity when it comes to rape charges, and the news report below is a perfect example. A "he said-she said" rape claim where there isn't enough evidence to bring charges, but he is named and she's not. Wonderful. We don't know what happend, so let's destroy him and make sure her reputation is intact. Great. So now anytime -- even forty years from now -- that his friends or prospective employers want to check him out, they need only Google his name and they'll see this horrid accusation, and his life is pretty much destroyed. How many employers will take a chance hiring a potential rapist? Seriously? But her identity is guarded with all the tenacity that Clark Kent guards Superman's.

Please note that THIS is the sort of case the rape feminists insist was a rape. They will include this in their rape column. For us, although the teen male must be presumed innocent, we don't know enough to say if it was either a false rape claim or an actual rape to include in our stats. But that's the difference between us and the rape feminists -- we're honest, and they're not, to be perfectly blunt.

P.S. No charges were brought because there wasn't enough evidence about what happened. As I read the following, I nearly choked, but then kept reading and was OK: "South San Francisco police Sgt. Ken Hancock said the District Attorney's Office can still file charges, but it is up to his department to bring them a stronger case. He said officers will continue to investigate and look for witnesses. 'We want somebody to corroborate her side of the story . . . " And that's where I nearly choked until I kept reading: " — or his, for that matter,; Hancock said. 'So far we haven't found that.'" Why is it that the "or his, for that matter," seems like an afterthought? Maybe because it was?

She isn't "the prosecutor." She may not be an attorney working for the state, but she is the one who, after 8 years, went to police, and filed charges. That sets in to motion the process by which he was prosecuted, so she should be held accountable. And how can anyone accurately remember what happened 1 day 8 years ago? And wasn't it nice that he was forced to tell the world about his small penis? Seriously!

Stick with me on this longer-than-usual post. It sums up many of the injustices the presumed innocent (who too often turn out to be falsely accused) face in the rape milieu.

Twenty-five years ago, the appellate court judge for whom I was working was sitting in oral argument on a case that posed the following question: whether the rules of evidence should be construed to admit evidence of rape trauma syndrome (in the form of a nurse's testimony that victims of rape will report the crime in ways different than victims other crimes, including delaying reporting rape for years). For no other crime was similar evidence admissible. The judge pointedly asked the prosecutor making the argument why rape differs from a case where a robber holds a gun to an innocent man's head and threatens to kill him. The answer was incoherent. Certain "studies" were mentioned in a sort of mumble, but the response was the legal equivalent of gobbledygook. The prosecutor's bottom line was that the judge would just have to take it as a leap of faith that the two situations are different. The judge didn't buy it, because that's not how good law is made. He saw through it as an attempt to politicize the rules of evidence.

Nothing has changed in the past quarter century. The rape milieu is replete with such nonsense, and there are constant attempts to foist counter-intuitive "rules" on us -- rules that aren't applicable to any other crime, that don't ring true, and that are wildly inconsistent with the experience of most people. These rules are invented solely to "prove" what can't otherwise be proved: that a rape supposedly occurred.

A comment on another post in this blog raised one such "rule" -- the old myth that women recant because they do not want to experience a "second rape" -- the supposed victim blaming trauma that sexual assault accusers are subjected to every step of the way in the judicial process. A corollary is that women simply don't report rape for precisely the same alleged fear.

No evidence that "second rape" is a significant problem, and the very term trivializes actual rape

There is, of course, no evidence that this alleged fear is widespread or that it is keeping significant numbers of women from pursuing rape claims. The very analogy to a second "rape" trivializes the brutality of rape, but that sort of inane hyperbole is consistent with the anti-intellectual habit of feminists and the sexual grievance industry of trivializing rape to arrive at the ends they desire. Example: they talk of "rape continuums" that includes "sexist" comments made by men and boys. They seem oblivious to the fact that equating such conduct with "rape" eviscerates that crime of its horror. Personally, I think they believe using a word like "continuum" makes them sound intelligent.

"An analysis conducted by the State Appellate Defender Office in Michigan found that the state's failure to invest resources at the trial court level has contributed to the costly imprisonment of defendants whose convictions were later reversed. The office reported that since 1996, there have been approximately 50 successful habeas corpus actions based on ineffective assistance of counsel claims in state court proceedings.

Once again, to cover up cheating, a woman falsely accuses someone of rape. And while a fine is all well and good, the courts are going to have to start handing down custodial sentences for those who make these false claims.

Monday, November 16, 2009

Comment: If you read our blog long enough, you might well conclude that the most dangerous place on earth for college-age men is a typical American college campus. One case after the next underscores the perils that sexually active young men face of being falsely accused of rape by young women who engage in consensual encounters but later regret it. A peculiar and disturbing phenomenon has developed: a number of reported false rape claims aren't confined to one hapless innocent male. False accusers seem to have become more brazen and their lies are now targeting groups of young men. They seem to be unconcerned that it's their word against the word of three or more young men (a very telling sign). That is what happened in the news story below about a false rape accuser at Loyola.

I would really like to know why the jury didn't believe this. It sounds more like a case of a drunken hookup, than a rape case. But there aren't any clear details on why they entered a non-guilty verdict.

Sunday, November 15, 2009

I saw some misinformation in an article published here, so I did what I normally do, and what I hope you do, too. I wrote to them. Here's my note:

Patty Tvaroha, adult community educator at the Advocacy Center, was quoted as saying in the Nov. 13, 2009 Ithacan Online: ". . . the false reporting of a rape is the same as any other crime, around 2 percent."

This is wrong. Even the FBI puts the number at four to seven-and-one-half times greater than for all aother crimes. Kindly advise us of your source and I will post your response on my website, The False Rape Society. Thank you.

The following is an article submitted at my urging by a reader, Mary H. She is a member of the demographic that writes to our site most frequently for help: she's the mother a young man she contends is falsely accused of rape. Some of the names have been changed, but that doesn't affect the power of the story.

It is very hard to decide where to start, I am thinking about the Pledge to Allegiance, the last phrase in particular, “with liberty and justice for all.” It strikes me now that is not always the case. It sure did not apply to my son, or others like him who are falsely accused of rape.

Adam‘s story is only unique because he is my son, and because this travesty happened to our family, the burden of which we will always carry.

I will never forget the confusion that followed so quickly after the Flat Head County Sheriff’s deputy pulled into the driveway of our vacation home. I had gone out to open the garage door to have a cigarette, and there he was pulling into the driveway, I quickly ran back inside and got my husband. I was still in my pajamas and was not nearly ready to entertain a deputy sheriff. He told my husband that he wanted to talk to Adam, who was still asleep; we were told to awaken him. As told, we got Adam up and explained that there was a deputy here to see him, this is when the confusion really set in; the deputy said he was under arrest for the rape of Lexi, my niece, Adam’s cousin. What the f--- was all that came out of Adam’s mouth, and then he was cuffed, removed from the house and put in the deputy’s cruiser. I followed him to the garage and asked again what the arrest was for; again he told me for the rape of Lexi. Adam was trying to tell the deputy that there was a mistake, that he had just spent the last couple of hours before he came home talking with his uncle Karl, Lexi's father. I asked the deputy where Lexi was, he said in the hospital having a SANE examine, all I could tell Adam was when the SANE came back this would be over, and do not talk to anyone. I was so very wrong, extremely naïve about the seriousness of the situation.

Friday, November 13, 2009

Let us be candid, though most won't be. Disappointment pervades the Matriarchy that America has become tonight as it appears Sgt. Kimberly Munley, brave though she surely was, wasn't the one who brought down Major Nidal Malik Hasan. "Ballistic tests will tell the whole story -- but it now appears that it was Senior Sgt. Mark Todd who felled Hasan," according to The New York Post.

Sgt. Munley had been hailed as a hero for several days, and her story seemed to mark a rare instance of a female subduing a dangerous spree killer, an Islamic terrorist who killed ten men and three women. A blog called Feminist Legal Theory gushed: "I am enjoying the attention, praise and credit that Kimberly Munley is getting today for her courage and skill in bringing down the shooter who killed 13 at the Texas military base yesterday." We printed a bizarre letter on this site from a woman who said this: "Officer Munley sets an example for all women to be trained in self-defense and use of weapons as a means of preventing rape and domestic violence." And many said this proves women can handle combat situations as well as men.

Once again, the purveyors of a feminist utopia had the "right" story, it's just that the facts got in the way.

Sgt. Todd, you can be certain, will get every bit as much publicity and praise as was showered on Munley. Right. And I have three balls.

But, seriously, what else is new? The politicized gender milieu has spawned one "truth" after the next supported not by facts but by leaps of faith. The three Duke lacrosse boys MUST have raped that innocent black student. Jessica Lynch MUST have been captured in a heroic gunfight in which she fought off Iraqi madmen intent on raping her. Women MUST be paid unfairly, as conclusively demonstrated by the gender wage gap. Women MUST tell the truth about being raped, and rape MUST be massively under-reported. Women MUST always be the victims of domestic violence and never the perpetrators. Women MUST be every bit as capable in every way as men in every field. Males MUST be undeservedly privileged. On and on it goes. The persons who question these "truths" because they are unsupported by facts are dismissed as misogynists, their queries muffled by the crushing weight of a thousand angry prevarications.

How did the truth get so lost? It is this simple: the truth does not fit the preferred narrative.

Allow me to draw a cinematic analogy that I've used before but that fits so well. Near end of the great, elegiac lament to the passing of the old west, "The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance," powerful U.S. Senator Ransom Stoddard, played by Jimmy Stewart, returns to his home town out west and confesses to the newspaper editor that his legendary reputation, his entire career, was based on a lie. Up until then, everyone believed that in his youth, Stoddard had shot and killed the notorious villain Liberty Valance (played by Lee Marvin). Now, at long last, Stoddard is coming clean, telling the world that Valance was really shot by a tough-as-nails rancher, played by the great John Wayne. The newspaper editor, having heard the entire story and believing every word of it, is not interested in publishing any of it.

"You're not going to use the story, Mr. Scott?" Stoddard asks incredulously.

The editor famously replies: "No, sir. This is the West, sir. When the legend becomes fact, print the legend."

This is the Matriarchy, sir. When the legend becomes fact, print the legend.

A perfect real-life example of the preferred narrative colliding with facts was provided by Glenn Sacks. I will quote Glenn:

"I'm reminded of an incident that took place with my son at a skateboard park several years ago.

"I used to take my son Saturday mornings to go skateboarding, but one time when we went they were filming a children's show there. My son and the others were encouraged to be the audience/extras for the show.

"It turned out that it was one of those Saturday kids' shows, and it was about this great girl skateboarder who was the victim of boy skateboarders' sexism. The sexism was that the boys didn't believe that a girl could or would really do dangerous skateboard stunts. The boys were, of course, made to look like fools for this belief.

"I watched as they filmed the dangerous skateboard stunts that the girl would do to show what sexist idiots the boys are. A teenage girl went up to the top of a tremendously tall ramp, got on her skateboard, and bent down to begin. Then she stopped, and her stunt double came on, similarly dressed.

"The stunt double did a bunch of amazing stunts, and I said to my son, 'wow, that girl can really skate!' Then I looked a little closer and saw that it wasn't a girl at all--it was a boy dressed to look like a girl.

"In other words, the point of the show was to make fun of the boys for thinking that a girl couldn't or wouldn't do dangerous skateboard stunts, and in order to film it, they had a boy do all the dangerous skateboard stunts for the girl. Nice, huh?"

Yeah, Glenn. Nice. But of course, the point that show was making is "true" even though the show's producers had no facts to back it up.

Did you get that? EIGHT. And yet the court still determined -- she shouldn't be put in prison.

Say what?! Police didn't even think that an action was warranted at an earlier stage, which means they gave tacit approval for this woman to accuse again and again and again. That, along with the court refusal to sentence her to a prison term, should be considered public misconduct of the highest order, and all involved should be investigated. And those who have been falsely accused, due to the inaction of law enforcement, should have the right to bring civil suits for violation of civil rights filed against them.

A woman who made eight separate false claims of rape or sexual assault has been spared jail.Gemma Gregory, 28, accused seven different men over a six-year period.

Former boyfriends were subjected to police questioning and DNA testing to clear their names.Her fantasy stories also wasted huge amounts of police time.

Gemma Gregory, seen at court today, made frequent claims that she had been raped.

As long ago as 2002, she admitted in a statement to police that she was ' seeking attention' from them. But it was not until last year, after recording several hundred calls either from her or about her, that they took action.

She was given a one-year jail term suspended for two years at Plymouth Crown Court for perverting the course of justice. Judge Francis Gilbert said she must receive mental treatment.

Her latest offence was in May when she rang police to say she had been raped at her home. She stuck to her story in a video interview three days later despite being warned she would be prosecuted if it was another lie.

A 34-year-old man was interviewed by police and for the next five months Gregory regularly contacted officers to ask how the case was progressing.

Yesterday, the victim spoke of his ordeal.

'We were going out for five to six months. I ended the relationship with her, but she got back in touch with me a couple of months later.

'We met up at a pub and saw each other for about two or three nights after that. I stayed at her flat one of those nights and we had sex just the once.'

He continued: 'She then left a message on my phone saying come round tonight but I was doing other things.

'The next thing I knew the police rang me up and asked me to come to see them. I was not arrested but attended the police station voluntarily. It wasn't very nice to be accused of rape.

'The police told me they thought the accusation against me was a load of rubbish.

'But I didn't know about the previous incidents, I had heard rumours but nothing more than that.'

Plymouth Crown Court heard that Gregory suffers from a personality disorder as well as other disorders.

'Because of previous allegations she had made it was strenuously explained to her about the implications of making a false claim.

'She was medically examined and video-interviewed.

Forensic evidence was taken from her. She rang us every two or three days to keep it going and claimed that her exboyfriend had made silent calls.

'She wanted him put in prison. She kept this going for a long time.' He said that some of the earlier 'suspects' had been arrested and had intimate samples taken as part of the inquiries.

The judge warned Gregory that if she did not comply with the terms of his order over the next two years, she would be jailed. 'False allegations of rape not only cause a great deal of wasted police time but also serious anguish to the person against who the complaint is made,' he said.

At a previous hearing he had told her: 'There are two possible outcomes - a lengthy period of imprisonment or treatment at an institution which will help you in the long run.'

It is understood that Gregory was not prosecuted earlier because of her apparent mental health problems and previous efforts to admit her difficulties.

A spokesman for Devon and Cornwall Police said: 'These types of allegations are of a particularly sensitive nature.

'We have to treat each case individually and on its own merits and investigate any such claims thoroughly.

COMMENT: The most important question that emerges from the case discussed in the news story below this comment is the single most important question in the entire false rapes milieu: How can a woman like this cause the state to hold innocent men against their will and subject them to humiliating intimate tests and to the anxiety of a rape charge hanging over their heads for several months? Put another way, why do we allow these women to have so much power over innocent men?

As you read the story, please notice that the case is rife with some of the most awful truths about FRAs. By way of example, the judge repeats the myth that FRAs are uncommon. In addition, the news account reports on the accuser's troubled background -- have you ever seen a news report go on about a rapist's troubled past? Further, the false accuser has done it before, so it's fair to call her a serial false accuser. If there were an FRA registry, it might have furnished notice about this woman's propensities to her latest victims. No such registry exists, of course, and men are left to their own devices to avoid these awful situations.

A woman willingly had sex with two men and then falsely claimed they had raped her, a court heard.

Christina Dallison, who also made a false rape claim against another man four years earlier, wept as she was jailed for two years yesterday.

Leicester Crown Court was told the two 40-year-old men she wrongly accused were held in custody for 20 hours, and underwent humiliating intimate tests.

All three innocent male victims endured the anxiety of facing prosecution for several months, until the cases were dropped.

Dallison (27), a former escort of Dunton Street, Woodgate, Leicester, committed the offences because she suffered from a personality disorder and craved attention.

She admitted perverting the course of justice by falsely claiming a volunteer worker had raped her, between May and June 2004, and a similar charge relating to two Leicester men, between May and July last year.

Passing sentence, Judge Michael Fowler told Dallison: "It's hard to imagine a more disturbing, distressing shadow to have hanging over you than an allegation of rape for many months.

"Your actions have general and specific consequences because they are a betrayal of victims of genuine rape and put into the minds of people that false allegations (of rape) are in some way commonplace, and we know they're not."

Judge Fowler said Dallison had deep-seated personal problems but added that did not excuse "lying in a way calculated to get others into trouble in the most serious and damaging of ways".

Rosa Dean, prosecuting, said that in January 2004 Dallison met a volunteer worker in Manchester via the internet and had sex with him on their first date. Two days later she made a false rape claim, causing him to be held in a police cell for three hours and subjected to intensive questioning.

Due to her obvious lies, the case was dropped against him six months later.

The matter was reinvestigated after the further false rape claims.

In 2008 she met one of the victims at Leicester Job Centre. She approached him, saying she found him attractive. She told him she was a nurse and then an escort girl, who had no accommodation. He briefly let her stay at his Belgrave home.

She later contacted him, inviting herself round, interrupting his evening with a male friend.

Dallison had taken amphetamine and ended up instigating consensual sex with both men.

While there, she sent her then boyfriend text messages purporting to be sent by a man holding her captive and threatening to kill her. The boyfriend alerted the police, who located her at the Belgrave address. There Dallison told police both men in the house had raped her.

When later questioned about her false claims Dallison said she thought the two men had treated her badly and she felt like a whore.

Rebecca Herbert, mitigating, said: "She's utterly distraught at the prospect of custody. She suffers from a severe personality disorder and is a deeply troubled woman."

Dallison was rejected as a child by her mother, abused by a step-grandfather and unable to form lasting relationships.

Mrs Herbert added: "The very behaviour she indulges in to attract men is because of her complete lack of self worth."

After the hearing, Cindy Allen of Leicester's Rape Crisis Centre said: "We at Jasmine House deplore any person who brings false accusations of rape as it damages the credibility of all and wrecks the lives of innocent people."

Thursday, November 12, 2009

I rarely read feministing.com because its world view is akin to a cult, with tenets accepted by its devotees that are flatly contrary to the accepted beliefs and common experiences of the vast majority of Americans. Assertions are posited as fact without any supporting evidence, based on nothing more than the serene ipse dixit of its authors. The readers who comment on the posts opine with a self-righteousness and a certainty usually reserved for the "straight-man" characters in a comedy film -- you know, the ones who will end up with a truckload of horse manure dropped on their heads before it's over.

In short, that site so reeks of anti-intellectualism that it can aptly be called bizarre. (I will, of course, await the de rigueur sarcasm of that blog's devotees, who will take issue with the fact that this blog speaks out for a class of victims they insist does not exist.) I inadvertently stumbled onto a link at that site to a post by one of their writers named Courtney, called The Question of Accountability in Feminism. This is an example of what I am referencing:

". . . it does seem critical for men interested in doing feminist work and identifying with the feminism to be accountable to certain basic ideas--like the notion that men have, for too long, possessed a disproportionate amount of power in our society."

Ah, there it is. In black and white. The central tenet of modern feminism, and the raison d’être for that blog's existence. Read it, re-read it, and memorize it. "Undeserved" male privilege. Men haven't acted as they have -- inventing and building pretty much everything, risking and often giving their lives through perils of every kind and nature, struggling against all adversity to be providers for their wives and femilies -- out of a social compact to which women have been willing participants if not prime instigators. Oh, no. Men are nothing less than oppressors and subjugators of women, lording over them with brute strength and singularly intent on retaining their "power."

And I have a bridge in Jersey I'd like to sell the readers of Feminising.com. There is an ancient legal word for their central tenet: horseshit. It is so out of step with reality, nobody buys it outside of Womyn's Studies classes and one dark and twisted corner of the blogosphere. It is scarcely worth bothering to refute since it is self-evidently wrong.

Wait. There's more. You'll really like this.

"This means that in feminist spaces, men should be cognizant of how much they talk, what sort of influence they exert, what kind of leadership they inhabit. But then again, shouldn't men and women always strive to be cognizant of these things."

I am loathe to try to attach meaning to something so strangely worded. I don't know about you, but it reminds me of how the head maid talks to the newly hired help in a very wealthy household: "Do not speak unless you are spoken to; you must know your place . . .."

There's more:

"And, of course, real accountability would come in creating a world where everyone gets to express their gender identity in whatever way feels most authentic, a world where no one would be forced to exist within a gender binary that didn't feel right for them."

Right. Except that if men want to act in a way that feministing.com disapproves of, men had better be prepared to be branded as evil. So much for expressing your gender identity.

There was a time when I could write a very lengthy piece ridiculing a post like this. I now realize it isn't worth my time. Virtually nobody is buying this nonsense, aside from very impressionable (and dare I say often troubled) young people and angry older women, who feel so terribly disenfranchised that they blame "men" for whatever ails their twisted psyches. The central tenets underlying their movement are simply wrong, by any measure, and their blog isn't worth reading or refuting.

What always gets me, is the excuse making that follows any time something like this happens. At what point do we stop excusing bad behavior, and punish it? Cops say it was actually a $50,000 extortion plot cooked up with her lover.It sounds like the sort of romantic-mystery potboiler that keeps readers on the edge of their summer beach chairs: A strikingly pretty Florida housewife with a handsome husband and two beautiful young daughters is kidnapped, sexually assaulted, and held for $50,000 ransom.

Or was she?

Prosecutors contend the strange case of 37-year-old Quinn Gray, who claims she was abducted and held for four days in hellish captivity, is a cleverly planned ruse. They claim her supposed abductor, a 25-year-old Bosnian immigrant, was actually her lover, and that the pair plotted to extort cash from Quinn’s well-heeled husband, Reid.

Quinn Gray and her alleged lover, Jasmin Osmanovic, are charged with extortion. But two of her lawyers appeared on TODAY Tuesday to say that Gray, who has a history of mental illness, is a terrorized victim, not a scheming co-conspirator. The case has set the community around Jacksonville, Fla., abuzz.

‘Please do this, honey’

No one is arguing the basics of the case. Quinn Gray went missing the Friday of Labor Day weekend. A ransom note, written in Quinn’s handwriting, was found tacked to the front door of the Gray’s $4 million home, stating: “There are three men holding me right now, and they want $50,000 cash. Stay at the house NO COPS! Keep your cell phone on you. Keep the kids with you. Please do this honey, please!”

But authorities believe it was all trickery. They believe Gray was having an affair with Osmanovic that began when the two met in June at a gas station where Osmanovic worked, and that the pair cooked up a fake kidnapping plot.

“It became more and more evident to really everybody involved that there was something far more complex and involved than a kidnapping,” St. Johns County Sheriff David Shoar told NBC. “Quinn Gray was not kidnapped.”

Authorities cite, among other things, the manager of the hotel where Gray was allegedly being held saying she “didn’t seem to be in distress at all,” and a 90-minute audiotape they say captured the sounds of Gray and Osmanovic in the throes of passion, and then plotting the details of a fake kidnapping.

Mental illness, substance abuse

But Gray attorney Mark Miller has a simple explanation: Quinn Gray is a very sick woman. Miller told Matt Lauer live on TODAY, “Her reaction to the kidnapping, it may seem bizarre, but it’s all explained by her mental illness.”

Miller says psychiatric problems run in Gray’s family, and that she tried to mask her own emotional problems by abusing alcohol. Gray checked in to the renowned Hazelden clinic in Minnesota last June to receive treatment, but when she checked out in July, she was a virtual mental powder keg, her attorneys say.

“Quinn has grown up with a stigma against recognizing what she was going through,” Miller told Lauer. “She self-medicated for much of her adult life with alcohol; that led to a substance abuse problem. In the middle of the summer, she was treated for alcoholism.

“When she came back, for the next six weeks she was untreated, undiagnosed and she was no longer self-medicating. She was in a manic phase of her bipolar disorder when she was kidnapped.”

That made Quinn Gray easy pickings for the likes of Osmanovic, Miller contends. He said that when the case goes to court, he will move to have the incriminating audiotape tossed out under rape shield laws. Far from being a tape of two people making love, then scheming to collect $50,000, said Miller, the tape is actually “an audio recording of a woman who has been kidnapped, abducted and being raped.”

Standing by his wifeFor now, Quinn Gray is at a psychiatric facility on St. Simons Island in Georgia, and Osmanovic is in jail. Attorney Rick Jancha, also representing Gray, told Lauer Tuesday that she is “doing rather well. Of course she’s very anxious about what’s going on. She’s in the middle of her treatment.”

And Reid Gray is standing by his wife, both believing her version of the events and bankrolling her defense. In a statement, he said, “This has been an extraordinarily traumatic experience for me and my entire family. I am deeply concerned over how this incident has, and will continue to, affect our children. I love my family and will do whatever I can to make sure that Quinn receives all of the help and support that she needs.”

Osmanovic continues to assert to authorities that he and Gray had a six-week relationship that included trysts at his gas station, at a hotel and even at her home. He says Gray made him a house key and gave him the home’s security code — and gave him a cover story to use if anyone came to the door while he was there.

Miller asserts that Osmanovic’s claims, and the prosecutor’s contention that the pair were having an affair, are bogus.

“Not one e-mail, not one text message, not one cell phone record — there is nothing that supports their contention that it’s a faked kidnapping,” Miller said.

Shreveport Police arrested 22-year-old Olivia Green who now faces a charge of criminal mischief, after reporting back on October 8 that she had been abducted and sexually assaulted.

Police say Green originally told officers that she had been kidnapped from a convenience store on W. 70th St., back on October 5, by two males who then allegedly held her captive for four days, where she was also sexually assaulted.

Upon investigating, detectives soon learned that Green had lied and was never kidnapped or sexually assaulted.

Wednesday, November 11, 2009

Below is the contact information for Kayleen Schaefer, with whom I have been in contact. She is writing an article for Details Magazine on FRAs, and she is looking to speak with those who have been falsely accused. She is looking for someone to be the centerpoint for her story. This is your chance to reach a mainstream audience. I strongly recommend that you contact her at your earliest convenience to tell her your FRA story, if you are willing to help.

Comment: Before you read the story below, consider this: when a tough, cocky, and nationally revered athlete admits he was almost in tears after being sued civilly for rape, is it any wonder what a false criminal charge of rape does to the average man or boy?

The average guy falsely accused of rape isn't sued civilly. No, his false accuser uses the police and the criminal justice system as her "muscle" to give effect to her lies. The average guy falsely accused of rape is handcuffed and taken away from his family against his will. He will be treated like a criminal the entire time he's in jail. He will be subjected to humiliating physical examinations. He will be sneered at and often jostled by the jail guards. Bail will be set at such a high level that he likely won't be able to get out before the trial, or before she recants. As he sits in his cell for months awaiting his fate, he will have hanging over his head the prospect of years in an even more inhumane prison. He knows that when he's in prison, if he fits the right demographic (and possibly even if he doesn't), he will, himself, become the victim of the very crime he was falsely accused of.

And, no, he will not receive the support a popular NFL quarterback receives. He likely will lose his job, his business, his apartment, possibly his home, his wife or girlfriend, and the support of his family and friends. He won't be able to pay his bills, and if he owes child support that he can't pay because he can't work, he will have the prospect of incarceration for that hanging over his head. If his name hits the newspapers, it will be difficult for him to ever get a decent job again because all that a prospective employer will need to do is "Google" his name to discover the nasty accusation. Even if the charge is determined to be false, most employers won't take the risk of hiring someone who "might" have raped someone.

This is not to minimize the agony Ben Roethlisberger is experiencing. It's only to give some perspective. If you think rape is necessarily more traumatic than a false rape charge, I invite you to spend a couple of weeks (that's how long it will take you) reading through this website. I promise you that you will never dismiss the problem of a false rape claim again.

And, oh, one more thing: once this is cleared up and her claim is dismissed, Mr. Roethlisberger, I do hope you will remember similarly situated men -- the guys who read this blog and many, many who haven't found us yet. Speak out for them, become their advocate. Because what happened to you isn't fair, and what's happening to countless other guys is even more unfair.

PITTSBURGH (KDKA) ― When a lawsuit alleging rape was first filed against him, Ben Roethlisberger called it "false and vicious," but said he wouldn't discuss the case or his private life in the media. Tuesday, he spoke about his private life and his reaction to being sued on national television.

"I was blown away - it shocked me. It hurt because people that know me and that I'm close with know that this is ridiculous," he said during an interview on ESPN's "E: 60." "I was just taken aback and didn't know what to think."

Roethlisberger talked about the moment the civil suit was presented to him this summer nearly a year after the alleged incident took place.

"I was actually signing a ball for a little kid, was having fun and had a stack of papers handed to me," he said during the interview.

Roethlisberger said that moment and his press conference five days later at the Steelers headquarters were two of the toughest experiences of his life.

"I was almost in tears because I got up there and I thought about my family, I thought about my teammates who are my family," he told ESPN.

"There was almost like the, 'This is really happening,' moment."

Roethlisberger has continued to fight the accusations, going so far as to file a countersuit against Andrea McNulty for defamation, extortion and abuse of process – even after she offered to settle out of court.

He says it's important for people to know he did nothing wrong.

"We want to clear my name because that's what hurt the most because my name, my family's name has been tarnished by this accusation that hurts a lot," Roethlisberger said on ESPN.

The following case underscores the principal problem confronting men and boys accused of rape: their accusers have the power to say whether they will be held for trial based on no other evidence.

The rape laws were changed in the past several decades to drop the requirement of corroboration based on the insistence of feminist legal scholars that women don't lie about rape. Now we know better. Women do lie about rape, and often, but the "no corroboration" rule remains in effect. Feminst scholars insist this rule merely makes rape like every other crime by not requiring two evidentiary sources to convict. But rape isn't like any other crime. The very physical evidence of the crime is the same as the physical evidence of one of the most basic human interactions -- an interaction of love, not criminality. It is simplicity itself to transform that act of love into a crime: all a women must do is say so. And many of them do exactly that.

"Corroboration" could include the flimsy statement of the accused that is riddled with misstatements of fact. We are not suggesting that any alleged rape that occurs with no witnesses should not be prosecuted. We are merely saying that where there are conflicting claims, both of them stated with plausibility, and no other significant evidence, there is no basis for proceeding to trial. It is unjust and immoral for a prosecutor who knows there is a plausible defense to "roll the dice" and hope the jury does something nutty like convicting the male. That, apparently, was the goal of a certain prosecutor in Durham, North Carolina who saw a chance to score political by prosecuting three "privileged" white college boys.

In the following case, the man might have done bad things to the woman, but she admits she cried rape because she was angry at him. In my book, what she did was worse than anything he is charged with, yet there is no indication that she will be charged. What a terrible, terrible system we have wrought, thanks to feminism, and thanks to the feminists' useful idiots, the law-and-order chivalrous males.

SAN DIEGO - A woman who told police her estranged husband raped her after abducting her and their 3-year-old son recanted her story Monday, prompting a judge to dismiss a sexual assault charge, but he still faces other felony counts.

Maria DelCarmen Carmona testified during a five-hour preliminary hearing that Adelaido Nunez -- the father of three of her children -- raped her in his San Diego home after abducting her and their son from the parking lot of the Northgate grocery store at 1410 S. 43rd St. last June 25.

Carmona, 24, testified that she was with Eduardo Bueno Salvidar and a 4-month child they had together when they drove her grandmother to the Southcrest market to do some shopping.

Carmona said she was loading the groceries into Salvidar's SUV when Nunez pulled up about 10:30 a.m., grabbed her, struck her with a cell phone and threw her into his pickup truck. She testified that Nunez drove her and their son to his nearby residence, then took her into a bedroom, locked the door and had sex with her while the boy watched Spiderman.

Monday afternoon, during questioning from Deputy District Attorney Dino Paraskevopoulos, Carmona said the truth was that she and Nunez had consensual sex that day, and that no rape occurred. She said she initially told police the opposite because she was mad at the defendant for abducting her from the store.

"He took me against my will, but we had sex because we both wanted (to)," Carmona told the prosecutor.

The woman told Paraskevopoulos that she didn't want to see Nunez do a lot of time in prison so he could be around for their children.

Judge John Thompson dismissed a charge of spousal rape, but said enough evidence had been presented for Nunez to stand trial on two counts of kidnapping and one count each of domestic violence, false imprisonment and misdemeanor child endangerment. Nunez faces a maximum of 11 years and four months in prison if convicted. His trial was set for Dec. 8.

The laws in the U.S., the UK, New Zealand, and pretty much everywhere else, do not adequately protect men and boys falsely accused of rape. Of this I have no doubt. While we are trying to change the laws to correct injustice, see, e.g.,here, the process is an uphill battle, and it is legitimate to ask, at what point are men and boys justified in taking the law into their own hands to correct injustice -- to do what the laws won't? At what point must the technical letter of the law give way to a man's greater need to protect his liberty or his reputation?

For example, is a man justified in breaking the law that exists in various states by secretly videotaping a sexual encounter in order to have proof of consent in case he is arrested on a false rape charge?

Is a man justified in lying on an employment or other application, made under penalty of perjury, to cover up a false rape charge if he has reason to believe it will hurt him?

If a man is falsely accused of rape by his ex-girlfriend, is he justified in going into her email account without permission, or even gaining entry to her apartment when he knows she won't be there, to retrieve crucial evidence that would exonerate him?

Or how about this item in the news this week: if a college newspaper printed a "news" item asserting that a frat house was the scene of a rape that did not occur, would the frat members be justified in grabbing up all of the student newspapers (which are presumably free) so that the lie would not be spread? Is their collective reputation more valuable than the student newspapers' need to circulate the lie? See this item, where Phi Kappa Psi fraternity at the University of Minnesota apparently was involved in the theft of more than 10,000 newspapers last month, costing Arizona Student Media an estimated $8,500 in advertising revenue, printing costs and salaries. A student explained that the theft "was an effort to contain the spread of what Phi Kappa Psi members believe to be a false accusation of rape or attempted rape on Phi Kappa Psi property.” You see, a "Police Beat item in the stolen issue contained a police report in which a woman said she thought she may have been drugged at a Phi Kappa Psi party."

I don't condone this particular misconduct. I don't even need to reach the issue about the morality of snatching up free newspapers because it suffices to say that the young mens' plan was destined to backfire from the outset (and it did). The ensuing publicity probably gave the "news" story about the alleged rape more publicity than it otherwise would have received.

But the larger question -- when should men take the law into their own hands to protect themselves, and to what degree? -- is one that arises here from time to time, and its one that's worth pondering.

One postscript: I have heard a couple of fringe men's rights advocates say -- most likely out of extreme frustration with the inadequacy of our laws -- that if a man is falsely accused of rape, he should be allowed one free rape of his accuser. That sort of barbarism is not what I am talking about when I ponder when men might be justified in taking the law into their own hands. But if you think it is awful that a couple of men's rights advocates have made that suggestion out of extreme frustration, please consider that I have heard many feminists note with glee the fact that men and boys convicted of rape likely will be raped themselves in prison. To them, that is not barbaric, it is perfectly justified.

LARGO - A 20-year-old Largo woman was arrested Tuesday after her boyfriend found her with another man at her home, and she falsely claimed the man was raping her, according to Largo police.

Coffii Ann Castellion, of 605 16th Ave. N.W., lot 1, was charged with making a false report to a law enforcement officer.

A Largo police officer came upon a disturbance at 16th Street and Clearwater-Largo Road at about the same time dispatchers received a call regarding a sexual assault, according to Largo police.

The officer listened as Castellion told him she was the victim of a sexual assault, and he thought there was more to it, so he had Castellion and the alleged suspect transported to the police station for further interviewing.

Within an hour, Castellion admitted the sexual battery was bogus, Largo police said. She said her boyfriend had recently been released from the Pinellas County Jail and caught her with another man at her home. She also believed that by filing a sexual battery report she could receive some medical treatment related to her recent sexual activity, Largo police said.

Monday, November 9, 2009

In the Fort Hood shooting rampage, ten men and three women were killed. The police officer who shot the gunman, Kimbery Munley, is a woman. Here's an interesting letter to the editor in the Wilmington Star about the shooting. Despite the fact that ten of the victims were men, the gist of the letter is that women should learn to fight like Sgt. Munley so that they, too, can defend -- women and children from violent men.

Um, it seems to me that Sgt. Munley proves that women can also defend men, when they want to. Too bad people like this letter writer never got the message that sometimes men need defending, too. Read the letter below:

Letter to the editorSelf-defense Training for Women

Officer Munley sets an example for all women to be trained in self-defense and use of weapons as a means of preventing rape and domestic violence. Every public school, YWCA, domestic violence shelter, and police department should provide such training. If all women were able to defend themselves and their children against attack, the statistics on rape and domestic violence would drop precipitously. Violent men look for vulnerable victims, not for people who can effectively fight back. Munley should be funded to lead such a national program.